To All,

While I am not a lawyer, I stumbled upon a law school article pertaining to repaying students loans via an IBR Plan.

See Link Below:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/income-based-repayment-explanation.html

In the article (mid-way down), the author states that “qualifying payments” as it relates to the 25 year forgiveness period include student loans that have been under an economic hardship deferment as of July 1, 2009.  As my student loans have been defered under a hardship status since ‘09, I wanted to see if anyone here on the forums has already dealt with this issue?

Does this mean that I can count the time my student loans were in deferment as part of the 25 year forgiveness period?

If I consolidated through The Direct Loan Consolidation website, can I use this qualifying payment status?  If so, how do I communicate this to my lender?  BTW, I call my future service provider (Direct Loans) and they were clueless on this topic.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

The following will count towards IBR’s 25-year forgiveness period:
Payments made in the Income Contingent Repayment plan (ICR) before July 1, 2009.
All payments made on or after July 1, 2009 in the IBR, Income Contingent Repayment (ICR), and Standard (10-year) Repayment plans.
Periods when the borrower has a calculated payment of zero in IBR or ICR (this occurs when your income is at or below 150% of the poverty level for your family size).
Periods on or after July 1, 2009, when the borrower has been granted an economic hardship deferment.

But BEWARE!  Because if a borrower consolidates, the consolidation loan pays off the underlying loans and a new loan is issued.  The Dept of Ed might not allow payments on the underlying loans to count towards forgiveness of the consolidation loan.  I don’t think that’s the only way to interpret the law, but I’m not in charge.